There But For the Grace of God
by CBK1000
Summary: 'In the streets of New Orleans they deadlock, a wolf gutted, a vampire pierced, and like the careful general he presides over this all, watching, waiting.' Every war must have a boiling point, every king his weakness. Third in an AU Originals series. Klaus/Caroline


**A/N: Welcome to the third entry in my AU Originals series. If you have not already read the first two, 'And So We Lie Down To Sleep' as well as its sequel, 'They Hit With No Warning', I very much advise you to do so. This will make a lot more sense.**

**So. Some notes. I wanted to explain a few things to you guys really quickly so that you have some semblance of an idea of what is going on in the flashback section, even if you know nothing about that particular time period.**

**The 'Castle' Klaus refers to is Dublin Castle, which was the epicenter of the British occupation of Dublin, and where the first shot of the 1916 Rising was fired. (Into an unarmed sentry, specifically.)**

**Padraig Pearse was the Commander in Chief of the Irish forces during the Rising, and the quote from him is part of the Proclamation of Independence, which he wrote and then recited in front of the GPO as Irish Volunteers hoisted the flag.**

**James Connolly served as Commandant-General of the Dublin Division at the GPO.**

**The GPO stands for General Post Office, and was the main stronghold of the Irish during the Rising.**

**Eamon De Valera commanded the garrison at Boland's Mill (and went on to have a very important place in Irish history, but I won't go into all of that as it isn't relevant).**

**Sackville is short for Sackville Streets, the area surrounding the GPO.**

**The 'Liffey' is a river in Ireland. The gunboat Helga arrived via this river on Wednesday and, well, let's just say, proceeded to pound the shit out of the city.**

**There are also allusions made to some history between Klaus and Rebekah, which is covered in my fic 'Where There Is No', which you can just consider part of the universe at this point. It is not, however, necessary reading.**

**I hope you enjoy, but if I suck, be sure to let me know.**

* * *

**Tragedy At the Hotel Mazarin**

_ By Amy Thunley_

_New Orleans Sun Staff Writer_

_ Sunday night tragedy struck at the Hotel Mazarin when three as-yet unidentified males set fire to the lobby and, in what has become the third in a series of such attacks, killed five staff members with what authorities say appear to be sharpened fence posts. Witnesses saw three men, white, middle-aged, fleeing the hotel after flames engulfed the lower level of the hotel. It is unknown whether they are connected to the other attacks._

_ The French Quarter was rocked last week by the horrific slaying of thirty-eight-year-old Macie Jermain, the first victim of these so-called 'Vampire Murders', who was discovered by a tourist in a parking garage outside the Funky Pirate on Bourbon St. late Monday night. Jermain was skewered with the same type of weapon used in the Sunday night attack and left in a dumpster with the weapon still embedded in her chest. Police still have no leads on her murder._

_ Tuesday saw the discovery of another body, twenty-three-year-old Cam Rider, left outside One Eyed Jack's on Toulouse St.; on Thursday Officer Jack Whittley stumbled across a couple while patrolling his beat along Conti St. They have been identified as twenty-five-year-old Rosa Limn and eighteen-year-old Bryan Jones._

_ Police believe this unknown assailant or assailants may be targeting Hotel Mazarin employees- all four worked for the hotel and its proprietor, Marcel, prior to their deaths. _

_ The sighting of the three men fleeing the fire is the first eye witness account of any potential suspects; if you have any information on these men or any of last week's murders, please contact Detective Bryant of the NOPD at (504) 836-2251._

* * *

**Ninth 'Vampire' Victim**

_By Tristan Casey_

_Times Picayune Staff Writer_

_ The ninth victim in a series of attacks which have left New Orleans reeling in their wake, Emma Parker, twenty-six, was discovered early Wednesday morning by an employee of the Hotel Mazarin, staked and left in the hotel's valet parking. Like the victims before her, she was stabbed through the chest; the murder weapon was again recovered at the scene by officers._

_ Emma was employed as a waitress with the Hotel Mazarin prior to her death. Co-workers say she left around 11:00 that night for her home farther down the French Quarter; at 2:00 a.m., while taking out the trash, one of those co-workers discovered her in the parking lot and contacted authorities. _

_ When contacted for comment, Marcel had this to say: "I am deeply saddened, of course, by recent events, but I am confident that those responsible will be brought to justice."_

_ Lead detective James Bryant says there have been no breaks in the case but that officers are working around the clock to ensure that this killer(s) is apprehended. _

_ Our hearts go out to Marcel and the Mazarin staff in these difficult times. If you have any information regarding these attacks, please contact Detective Bryant, (504) 836- 2251. _

* * *

**Violence Rocks French Quarter**

_By Devon Riker_

_Louisiana Weekly Staff Writer_

_ For three weeks the French Quarter has been plagued by a series of killings known as the 'Vampire Murders' which so far have claimed the lives of twelve. _

_ Thursday morning saw another addition to the already mountainous case load of the overburdened NOPD when three men assaulted a woman and, before several horror-stricken eyewitnesses, burned her alive. Eyewitnesses report that the men made references to "burning at the stake" as well as allusions to the Salem Witch Trials. _

_ "They just descended on that poor woman. Never seen anything like it. Walking along, minding her own business, and then these three gentleman came along and all of a sudden they grabbed her, and next thing I knew she was screaming and burning and, God, just awful. That poor lady. Happened so fast I didn't get a good look at any of them, but heard one of them say something like, 'That's how we deal with bitches like you.' And then one of the others, he sorta laughed and said it was good enough for 1692, and off they went," claims witness James Christopher. _

_ New Orleans is the murder capital of the United States, with nearly 5,000 murders taking place over the last twenty years, but not since The Axeman terrorized the city nearly a century ago, from May of 1918 to October of 1919, has there been such a spree of violence. _

_ The French Quarter is the heart of the city with its hyperactive nightlife and exotic cuisine; it is also where one can find just about any vice that appeals to the darker aspects of human nature. Rampant prostitution and brutal robberies make this thriving tourist attraction, the city's largest source of revenue, a cautionary tale that business owners claim is beginning to impact the local economy._

_ "No one wants a po'boy that bad, that they're willing to get shot for it, you know?" states Nathaniel Zimet, owner of Boucherie. _

_ Officers have no leads in the brutal burning of Maya Lenker. Any information on this case should be directed to Detective O'Connell, NOPD, (504) 836-2251._

* * *

On Tuesday he finds the little rabbit heart of Marcel's unfortunate lackey with his dismissal of that most important first rule of espionage, and he pulls until the man flails and screams and dies.

You never get too close, mate.

Hover at a distance; see but do not be seen.

Stand back and watch the target make his way from post to post, let the man ahead of you pick up his trail, run him down, pass him along to the next.

In this way you stalk a man, wear him down, chip him away.

When he catches the scent of his predator he should already be cornered, crouched in his stinking animal fear in desolate alleyway or empty street corner; you approach him with smile on your face and fingers round your automatic, and perhaps a plea or two, you allow him with cocked head and unwavering smile, and then you forgo this automatic in your pocket, this impersonal weapon of man with its dispassionate bullets, and you tear out his throat.

Such a shame, to not get the hands dirty once in a while, to not feel around for spine and liver and heart, wriggling the fingers as they go.

What does an assassin's bullet know of all the different octaves of the human voice, the shrill protests, the feeble entreaties; to fire is to end it too quickly, to put a man out of his misery.

In the streets of Dublin the great revolutionary Michael Collins bade his men, take this one, lads, and so it was done, one muffled shot through Irish fog and then back to the Wicklow for lunch, but is that any way to go about it, mates?

Let them anticipate.

Let them cower in their ammonia puddles, these frail yes men of the other side. Let them count step by step the measured click click clicking of the approach, mortality on the march, whistling as it goes.

And so this lackey who stalked Caroline for five blocks, who with more than duty in his eyes watched her walk-

He is corralled.

Herded.

Down an alleyway they veer, Marcel's man ahead of him, heart a flutter, isn't that flattering, and when this pathetic little minion leaps from street to dumpster to rooftop, he with his thousand years of superiority reaches out and takes an ankle in hand and cracks it like a whip, slamming the man face first into the wall.

There is a pause.

A frightened sob: music to his ears, that, mate, give him another- tell him just precisely what it is you planned to do to her, go on, no need to be shy, boy-

Tell him everything.

"I was going to torture her first," the man hiccups.

Interesting.

Something like this, then, he says, and breaks three of the man's ribs.

The bones of a monster are just as brittle as those of man; though they may re-knit, stitch themselves back together with no improperly-healed bend, no arthritic twinge to hail winter's sharp white arrival, shatter they will, fracture they do. And the _pain _of it- well this is where man and monster do not diverge.

The man screams and he smiles.

"You were going to make her cry," he says, and rotates the man's wrist counterclockwise twice, two full revolutions of the clock, mate, how does that _feel_-

Give him a little detail, hmm?

"Marcel told me just to kill her, but I was going to -she's cute- he wouldn't have known-"

With a wrench of his hand he peels free one of the bars across the dumpster and he stabs it down through the man's throat.

He yanks it back.

He thrusts it down again.

The man gurgles his pathetic wet scream and rolls himself from back to stomach, tries with bleeding fingers to drag himself sobbing away, and a kick to the ribs snaps his healed bones once, twice, _again_-

Tell him once more, mate, about the things you wanted to do to her; tell him how you planned to make her writhe; let him know how long she was to scream; tell him _now, you little puissant._

Tell him how she was to be discovered the next morning, with her beautiful lips bruised and her pretty eyes blank and her chest burned away to ash; tell him of the position of her skirt, and the grim nods of the men with their detective's notepads and their coroner's sheets-

He snaps the man's neck.

He waits with metal bar in hand for the boy to regain consciousness and then with this metal bar he goes to work, smashing the left knee, the right foot, impaling kidney, liver, lung.

He slams the man's face through brick and steel and pavement.

Terribly sorry.

Awful temper: his mother's side, mate, you understand, and an artist, on top of it all.

Touch moody sometimes, he is.

He drops the man's heart beside his battered head and steps out once more into the crowds.

Down the street, Caroline samples her little paper cup of Hansen's flavored ice, and smiles so brightly over the noisy tourists and the sweating locals.

He wipes the blood from his fingers, and he does not understand.

Behind him lies a man with shattered jaw, gaping throat, splintered shins.

In his heart boils still the rage with which he shattered this man's jaw and slit this man's throat and stomped to pieces his twitching cripple legs, and then this smile comes, and it scrapes him clean.

It empties him out.

He does not know how to reconcile the man in the alley with this man who stands here before her, helplessly returning this smile that reaches so many places inside of him.

"Are you getting some?" she asks him, lifting her cup. She lowers it with another smile. "What? You're looking at me all weird."

It's adoration, sweetheart.

It is everything a man has stomped down and sealed away, trickling out at last.

Didn't the Lockwood boy look at her like this -didn't a single one of her fellow students pin upon her a gaze such as his- a woman like this in lowly little Mystic Falls- how could they not _recognize_-

He takes a deep breath.

He hesitates for a moment, and then he holds out his hand.

"Would you like to see something?" he asks her.

* * *

He takes her to Woldenberg Park, to watch the sun set over the Mississippi.

They sit together on a bench just off the main walkway, not touching, her flavored ice still in hand, dissolving into soft lime snow inside her cup.

"I used to come here, back in the early 1900s, when we first settled in New Orleans. The view was a bit different back then, of course. And, of course, I was alone."

She watches his face as dusk turns the water to blood with its thin red fingers and with her free hand she reaches out, and she grazes his shoulder.

He doesn't turn his head but she knows his eyes soften and his dimples deepen and to be able to touch someone this way, just by _being _here-

You are not good enough, Damon told her and Stefan reminded her.

Second best, Care, Matt reiterated.

Tyler found his pack and like that he was gone and Elena was just _so sorry_ Bonnie, Stefan, Damon, Matt, UPS guy and boob measurement lady at the Victoria's Secret downtown, but Caroline _who_-

And he sits here, and he smiles because she lays her fingers for just one fleeting moment on the sleeve of his T-shirt; he ducks his head because she didn't turn away when he shyly turned this smile halfway toward her, and _God_, this _man_-

Sometimes she wishes-

She wishes a thousand years ago they had met, and she had swooped in between him and his father and she had spirited him away and given him a family and a home and some real freaking _happiness_.

They could have lived one lifetime and died with gray hair and disintegrating minds and been buried side by side, and maybe it wouldn't have been long enough, maybe she wouldn't have been Caroline of the superwoman punch and the eternally unchanged mirror, but he would still be Nik, no Klaus the bastard, no Klaus the murderer, just quiet Nik with his paintings and his horses and his don't-freaking-bullshit-me wife, right there beside him to give Daddy Asshole a kick in the shin.

He is just so way too broody, staring out across this river.

She takes her hand from his shoulder and sets down her cup, and he looks away from the water at last as she pushes off the bench and hops lightly down onto her feet.

"I'll race you to that statue," she tells him, indicating a sculpture of an old man and a little boy thirty feet or so down the pathway.

"What?"

"But no cheating, Mr. I'm-a-thousand-years-faster-than-everyone-else. Normal human speed."

"You're in heels."

"And I bet I can still beat you," she says with cocked head and arms over her chest, and that has his attention just like she _knew _it would, the friggin' smug jerk.

"Really." He sounds amused, but you know what? In ninth grade Elena gave her this letter she was supposed to pass along to Matt and then halfway across the quad Elena changed her mind and frantically motioned her back, but she'd already called out for Matt to come meet her, and three years of drama club, you better freaking believe she knew how to project her voice, so there she was, freaking _booking _it across the of-course-we-just-watered-this-whole-section-kisse s-the-school-board lawn, Matt hollering, Elena flapping her hands, and with a good two feet between her and Superjock Donovan she slammed that letter right back into Elena's fingers and even had time to fluff her hair back out before Matt slid to a panting what-the-hell-girls halt right in front of them.

So bring it on.

"And if I do, you have to take me to that club on the corner of Frenchmen."

"I don't go to raves, Caroline."

"You do if I beat you, snob."

"And if I win?" he asks, standing, his smile boyish and his hands linked, and if he doesn't stop looking at her like that with his stupid accent and his stupid smile she is going to do something even more stupid, and she's been so _good_- a whole month with him and she hasn't once even _entertained _the notion of repeating what happened in her rental car-

Ok, _fine_, she may have, once or twice, for a _second_, remembered his hands on her thighs and his lips on her neck and the way he breathed her name into her hair with so much behind those three little syllables, but ten _centuries _of practice- he just really knows what he's doing, ok?

"_If _you win, which is seriously doubtful, I'll…be your muse or whatever."

"My muse?"

"Yes, you know, for your paintings. Don't all artists need a muse?"

"Well, isn't someone a little sure of themselves?"

"Please," she snorts. "I found your sketchbook. You kind of have a theme going."

He presses his lips together and looks down, and, ok, is Satan in Levis actually blushing?

"Wait, wait!" she cries suddenly. "Ok, terms- I don't know exactly what 'muse' means to you, but I've seen all those old paintings where everyone's naked, so I want to make it clear that just because you painted naked whoever with Da Vinci, things have changed, this is the twenty-first century, and we wear clothes when we model. Sometimes. Not that one weird runway show I watched a few months ago where the models all had painted-on- you know what, never mind. Clothes. There will be clothes. I will be wearing clothes, lots and lots of clothes-"

"Caroline." He is trying not to laugh.

"Ok, good. Terms agreed upon, yes? Go," she says, and turns, and sprints off without another word.

Running is an escape.

5:00 in the morning, no sun to accompany you, no cars to splash you, you hit the pavement with music blasting, arms pumping, and you disappear.

The blacktop beneath you and the horizon before you- these are merely goals to check off in your head: mile marker reached, donut shop passed, mall left behind in the dust.

Regulate your breath, adjust your strides, reach with one hand to slip headphone from ear lobe to canal.

The world is fresh, the air full of rain; man has not yet arrived to leave his mark on the streets and his smog in the sky, and that horizon- think of it as the edge of the world.

There is no room for missing fathers or absent mothers or new boys with eyes only for your friend.

Step off, or turn back: there is nothing else.

But today she runs, and she enjoys the grass crushed to sharp perfume beneath her feet and the thunderstorm slapping of the river against the pilings, the creaking branches overhead with their new buds and their old leaves, and when was the last time this ever happened, when was the last time she ran just to _run_-

As a child you scramble down sidewalks with arms extended, mouth open, spinning, skipping, laughing, and who cares if someone notices- who cares that you have no reason to run, that you have no motive to move; it's not about the chase, it is not about the getting _away_.

You are alive.

Today you woke up and you swung your legs over the side of the bed, and the floor burned your toes with its cold winter boards and the sky took your breath in cigarette exhalations, and all of it, every moment, you _felt_.

And that is enough.

That is _always _enough.

Bonnie rots away in her box and Daddy crumbles to powder in his own, and they weren't supposed to be taken from her, she was supposed to have them forever, but the thing is, you just never know.

You can never be sure.

Klaus closes the distance between them two feet from the statue and catches her around the waist, and with a little scream she pitches sideways into the grass, his arms still around her waist, chest pressed to her back, and that was a super clear violation of the _rules_, Mikaelson, she is _owed_ a freaking night out-

"You cheated!"

"You cheated first," he replies, his chest so warm against her spine.

"_Excuse _you I did no such thing."

"It's customary to inform the other participants when they actually need to run."

"I said 'go'," she protests.

She feels him smile against her neck, and for just a moment she lies with his arms around her and his legs tangled up in her own, and she does not think about all the terrible things he has done or all the horrible events he will set into motion.

She lets herself be a girl who lost her best friends, who graduated with no father to cheer her on and no boyfriend to hold her close, who found this boy, this funny, charming, _sweet _boy everyone forgot to love.

She lets this boy hold her, even though he is scared of doing it wrong, and she lets this boy's breath stir her hair and his hands find her own, and for this one moment she simply exists, motionless, as he carefully threads his fingers down through hers one cautious millimeter at a time.

* * *

In the tenth century, Elijah patted his back while his father put down his horse with its broken leg, and through war, famine, riot, he can recall no other time someone has circled him in this way, with warm arms and tender understanding.

He soaked Elijah's shoulder with his tears and then from behind him came Rebekah's own noisy sobbing and to his back she put her forehead, and around his waist she wrapped her arms, and to share this intimate space with another human being, to hold and be held with no expectations, to simply make a _connection_-

In Egypt he took to his bed a dozen concubines with their pretty white throats, and among them were a few who determined that no mere playthings would they be, so taken were they with this pale foreigner and his funny little accent, but the first time he faced them with lowered fangs and calligraphy veins they flung at his soft young heart all the names Mikael coined first.

Monster, the one with the pretty black curls called him, and from her skull he peeled her face in long paper ribbons.

Demon, screamed the girl who begged please, take her for his wife, and with his stained creature teeth he removed her voice box, its ugly epithets and its revolted wailing.

Abomination.

Atrocity.

Don't call him that _never call him that_ he was only hungry he _didn't mean_-

Weak, Mikael screamed from his shoulder when he wept over their bodies. You are not a _man_, boy- _boy _that is all you will ever be, _pitiful_; is it any wonder your mother denies you, boy-

"_I will show you weak_," he roared to this tiny phantom man inside his skull, and for an entire night he swept through this tribe who welcomed him in and named him their own, setting fire to the tents, feeding upon the women, the children, the men with swords out before them and courage in puddles underneath them.

A man like this- you do not offer him a hand.

You do not tell him here is a shoulder, make use of its strength, there is a friend, find solace in their arms.

To be embraced is to be accepted.

The girl with the pretty black curls pressed her lips to his shoulder and breathed her love upon his skin, and such an _impassioned _confession it was, surely, _surely_ he thought, here is someone who can withstand the monster, here is someone who does not care, who will peel aside each layer and insist show me the next, let me go deeper-

In nine centuries, he never tried again.

What he holds he grasps only to crush.

But this girl- this girl he enfolds so carefully, and like the young desert women she has seen his worst, she has been exposed, enlightened, and does she back away with hand to her eyes, with scream upon her lips- does she quiver with prey awareness in his arms, chin tucked to chest, throat sheltered, carotid shielded-

No.

She _relaxes_; she taps her thumb against the fingers he slips so delicately down through her own and she burrows deeper into the grass, and why doesn't she struggle, thrash, flail out with her feet and dig in with her elbows-

The human form is meant to bend, to reach, to contort the limbs in such a manner as this, to touch as it wants to be touched in turn, and though he may have shirked its limitations he still walks within its skin, and he cannot escape its most base needs.

But for a thousand years, he has pretended.

Of what use has he for contact, for a warm hand and a gentle touch. Man with his need to be handled is inferior; he has lived ten lifetimes with no arms to cradle him or soft words to soothe him.

But in Paris he watched the couples go arm in arm about their day, and in Russia he studied the mothers who with bright faces took their children by the hand, and on a platform in Berlin's Ostbahnhof he lingered to see a soldier accept with open arms the woman who waited for so long to welcome him home, and he _wanted_.

Just a moment, just a little bloody _understanding _of this most basic human requirement, touch, what a _puzzle_-

And here within his arms it lies now.

Caroline-

Eighteen years has shown her how to grip a hand back, how to trace the lifeline and pick idly away at the nail, and yet a thousand years and he knows none of this. The rough whorls of another's prints, the soft sponge of their veins- the slippery lotioned palm with its athlete's calluses-

She shifts and he freezes, but she does not twist herself away, she does not pull herself out of his reach, and with a little shuddering sigh he tightens his arms and he shuts his eyes.

He breathes her in, he soaks her up.

* * *

On Wednesday they are confronted outside the Café Brasil, five altogether, and before she has time to lift her hand he decapitates the first, disembowels the second, and three, four, and five-

They try to run, simpletons.

In a blink he crosses the street to the alleyways through which they scatter, and with number three's head in hand, he tears open four's throat and spits it out onto the street, and now behind him there is a short little cry and a clattering, and magnificent creature that she is, she has already cornered the fifth, fangs lowered, hand round his neck.

He watches her slam him back into the wall hard enough to open the man's skull, and then with a deft flick of the shard of wood she has collected from somewhere, she pins Marcel's subordinate writhing to the bricks.

What a fantastic queen she would make.

He wipes the blood from her lower lip and chin where it has splattered, and before he can draw back his thumb she takes her tongue and she rolls it over his nail, up onto his knuckle, and with the stink of death all around them she shoves him back into the wall and follows the trail of red from shoulder to neck to ear lobe, tongue warm, lips exquisite, and, God, sweetheart, how long do you expect a man to be _tested_-

He drops his head back against the bricks, eyes fluttering, and he fists his hand in her hair and crushes his hips into hers and now into his ear lobe her teeth press, against his own her hips grind, and he turns his head to breathe her name into her curls-

* * *

Oh God what is she _doing_-

She pulls away with a gasp, hand to her damp mouth, and he blinks the haze slowly from his eyes, hips still flush against hers, and what in the mother _freaking hell _just happened-

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, I don't know why I just _did _that-"

He swallows hard and gradually one finger at a time lets up on her hair, his eyes on her lips, hand on her waist.

"I take this to mean that you're hungry?" he asks thickly.

* * *

He pours her a glass of o negative and disappears.

She stands staring out the window for so long with tumbler in hand.

Don't think she doesn't want to follow him.

Don't think she doesn't want to slip away up the stairs to his studio where he sits with sketchbook on knee and moonlight in hair. Don't think she doesn't want to flip this sketchpad from his knee and snap the pencil in his hands, to push him back with her fingers in his hair and her teeth in his neck- God, seven, eight, nine _months _it's been, and it's not like she hasn't noticed how perfectly his jeans fit him and how flawlessly his t-shirt hugs him; it's not like she doesn't study from time to time the soft indentation of his throat and the necklace that rests within, and if she imagines taking this necklace in hand and pulling him down by its strands to explore mouth and throat and tongue, do not _judge _her-

God, what is she _doing_.

She can only ever be his friend.

She can believe in him, she can nudge him quietly toward all the better things she knows he is capable of, she can _try _the way no one else has bothered to, but she's sorry, she can't be anything else to him- she cannot live up to what she sees in his eyes every time he looks at her, doesn't he _understand _that-

It's the wall, you see.

She wanted you to take it down, to tear it brick by brick to pieces, and how hypocritical, right, that she will not do the same, that she builds hers higher, but you have to understand that for years she left it down and look what _got in_, and look how quickly it wanted out once more-

You don't think there's a reason her dad left and Elena walked right past her and Tyler elected not to come home- you don't realize the common denominator here- you don't _get _that it is _her _that it has always been _her_, how do you not _see_-

She takes a sip, and she shuts her eyes.

In tenth grade, she cut the straps of Elena's heels and ripped the side out of her winter formal gown and then for two hours she sat in front of her mirror with her inadequate complexion and her not-quite-good-enough lips and her too-small eyes and she sobbed until she couldn't see.

Oh my God, you look so _good_, Elena.

Girl, I would kill for hair like yours.

Jesus, have you ever had a single zit in your entire life?

Elena, dance with me?

Elena, give us a pose for the school yearbook?

Elena, Elena, _Elena_-

See, it was never her.

It has _never _been her, not first, not without stipulations, so how can he look at her like there is no one else -doesn't he understand that beyond the wall there is a girl who hides but wants to be found, who has been left hanging for so long- isn't there a _reason _for that, don't you think-

So freaking _please_, don't expect so much, don't look at her like you have seen to the bottom, and on the way down your eyes have snagged every ugly little crack and crevice and cranny and you don't _care_.

How can he be so _sure_.

He hasn't even seen her morning hair yet, or the way she always wakes up with this one long vertical crease on her cheek because she has yet to figure out how to sleep without scrunching the pillow into her face, and if he actually had a TV in this place he'd have to wrestle her for the remote every Monday night during Bachelor season, and is that really want he wants for the rest of his existence? Because you just know 300 years from now, The Bachelor season 480 will be holding rose ceremonies in zero G, one-on-one dates to Mars all around, and she is still totally going to cry when the winner is picked even though three contractually-obligated months later they will go their separate ways and give snarky exclusives to People about how she was a slut and he was a jerk, and really, _really_, this is what he wants?

He is at her shoulder almost before she even registers his steps on the stairs, phone in hand, and as she turns to look at him, he snaps it shut with a deft flick of his wrist and slides it back into his front pocket. "Just checking up on your mother. Stefan says everything's been quiet."

"Thank you. Wait, Stefan's still in Mystic Falls? When you said you still had some contacts in Mystic Falls who could keep an eye on her, I didn't know you meant him. I thought you had some...leftover minions or whatever. I thought he was going to go off to college with Elena."

"Plans changed, apparently."

"Oh my God, don't tell me he let _Damon _have her!"

"I wouldn't know. You might have noticed Stefan and I aren't exactly in a place at the moment where we can exchange small chitchat."

Sometimes, he just looks so lost.

He deserves where he is right now, ok, she knows that, she _understands _that if he has no friends it is because he has driven them all away, and if his family has left him to rot then didn't he start it, by sealing them away in their boxes, didn't he starve them first, when he shut then up with no light, no love, no life-

But she knows all about lashing out and holding on too tight.

In their boxes they could not leave him; with folded hands and flaking cheeks they lay without choosing someone else, they slept without following another course, and when Elena walked out of that cell and into Stefan's arms, didn't she just want to keep her -wasn't that all she _needed_- didn't she just want to make her _stay_-

But you can't hold on, when you keep getting shaken off.

She watches as he taps the window with his finger, indicating the street below. "Three of Marcel's men, by the Place D'Armes. Two by that vendor on the sidewalk. He might not have the audacity to attack me here, in my home, but he's still keeping an eye on us." He pulls his hand back to rest it lightly against his left bicep, drumming his fingers against the sleeve of his t-shirt.

She frowns. "How can you tell? Can you hear them?"

"No; not from here. I can't pick them out of all the humans. But they are on surveillance duty, and that I know how to identify."

"So, what, you were like a spy in a past life?"

He smiles. "Something like that."

"Ok, I'm intrigued. Elaborate."

He turns that smile on her and reaches out with his long artist's fingers to lightly brush a curl from her eyes, one brief moth whisper of a touch, and then he returns his hand to his bicep and stands looking out the window. "For a while back in the early 1900s I ran with Michael Collins."

"Who was Michael Collins?"

"He was an Irish revolutionary. Brilliant man; he held the English at bay for a very long time, slipped his own men into their intelligence networks, organized the murders of several prominent British officers-"

"Wait a minute- you, what, fought for Ireland's freedom against the _British_? They didn't sort of have a teeny problem with that?"

"I've picked up an accent or two over the years, love," he says, slipping seamlessly into a heavy Irish brogue. "They never knew who I was, or to what nationality I belonged."

"So you spied for the Irish."

He presses his lips together, deepening his dimples, and flicks a side glance toward her. "From 1916 to 1921, with a few breaks here and there."

"I thought you told me a while back you were off fighting WWI in 1916."

"I was, for a bit. But the trenches get a bit tedious after a while, sweetheart, so in March Rebekah and I left England and settled for a bit in Ireland. I fell in with some members of Sinn Fein -magnificent bunch; very blood-thirsty- and in April took part in the Easter uprising."

"So, how many wars have you fought in?"

"Just about any major conflict you can imagine. A few here and there with less significant historical impacts but interesting nonetheless. The American Revolution, the American Civil War, The French Revolution, WWI, II, the 1916 Easter Rising, The Anglo-Irish War…the Russo-Japanese War. Popped out of New Orleans for a bit for that one. That's only a small handful of this world's more violent history that I've experienced, of course. But the Anglo-Irish War…now that was my favorite."

"You have a favorite war?"

"The Irish were fantastic. Such willpower- you just don't find that among many humans. The Easter Rising first showed me the fire in these people, and I never forgot it."

* * *

**Dublin, 1916**

He is almost a man, in these moments.

Battle fever is no mere proverb; it is indeed a sickness, a contagion, and through the masses it sweeps with its hot white touch.

What one man catches, another passes along.

He has no heart to hasten its beat, no terror of the reaper, that great black phantom under which man toils, but the sweat of these men, their hot salt nerves and their trembling rubber limbs-

For so long he has walked among man and he has mimicked their behaviors and he has retained their habits, and how alive he is in their midst now, with his rusty German rifle and his tarnished officer's revolver.

The rain is a mist; his breath is a cloud.

The Castle is taken- he hears the shot, the soft butcher's thud of the officer in his polished dress blues-

No.

With a shriek the gate shakes off its rust, swings closed its doors with a great metal crash, and now this surge which has rolled along the streets so confidently is turned away, doubles back its flow to pour out among the shops, and above him-

The flag unfurls.

Pearse begins: "Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom…"

From the north there is a flurry, an exchanging of fire, a splashing of brains, a splattering of bowels.

With eyes half-lidded he smells the hot red grease of the blood and the sharp powder flares of the guns, all the wartime scents which collect so pungently in the streets: voided bladders, weeping limbs, saltwater grief.

From far away he hears the clicking of English heels.

Not enough, mates.

Not enough by far.

Dublin has awoken, and it bares its teeth; you hold them within your thrall no more, these inflexible men of steel and stone. Shatter them if you must; raze their stores to dust; stack their children in cordwood mounds; break them to powder, burn them to cinders, but attempt, if you will, to fracture this fire within their eyes, to bend that which cannot be manipulated.

There is a volley.

To the southeast, from the direction of Boland's Mill, there are the great cannon booms of the obscure rifles with their outdated caps and their cartridges, the more subdued rattling of the automatics, and always the screams, rising, falling, rising, riding this swell that is war, breaking here, peaking there-

"Volunteers!" Connolly thunders. "Secure the streets, lads!"

Backbreaking work, is the barricading of narrow alleys and wide boulevards; with rifle propped nearby you stack and stack and stack, throw across to the next man what is handed down the line, pack cart upon cart, door upon door, metal shavings, wooden slivers, and all as the city is hammered, burnt, pounded; with a great dragon roar the ground shudders beneath your feet and the sky screams above your head, and on you hand, stack, shovel, press tight-

And the beast that is this wartime fever-

With wrapped fists, rifle butts, knife handles, it smashes the windows of nearby stores and it carries away the treasures within, new cigars in their noisy plastic and flour stones in their chalk-dusted bags, soft licorice, hard peppermint; the soldiers labor and the people riot, the children mutiny, the dogs howl, the felines slink.

He stacks in a flurry, his coat with its fine layer of rain mist and comrade sweat damp upon his back, fingers cramping, muscles knotting, and all of this smoothed over in a moment, the fingers unbent, muscles loose; on he toils for so much longer than a man while around him his companions pause to wipe drenched palms, dripping foreheads.

"Got a laborer's back on you, Nicholas," the young boy with the brown curls and the bright smile says, heaving forward with his shoulder, settling into place with a vast warning groan the last of the carts, his coat draped neatly over its side. Vest dark, blouse stained, this boy reaches out to clap his shoulder, turning to watch the looting. "Look at 'em. Fookin' animals."

Indeed.

He is a monster.

His father's sword severed soul as well as heart when Mikael drove its tip through his chest, and nine centuries he has walked this earth and fed upon its people, nine centuries he has been molded from man to thing, a wolf within his sheep's masquerade.

But what is your excuse, mates?

The soft licorice is consumed, the hard peppermint strewn in a gravel underfoot, the flour upended, the cigars smoldering.

On down the line they march, and when at some doors they are turned back with angrily-wielded broom, cooking pot, antique shotgun, these creatures with their mob valor swat aside this broom and batter back this cooking pot and snatch from indignant hands that antique shotgun.

But Ireland's populace does not bow so easily, no, and so unarmed the shopkeepers bar their properties with bodies stretched taut and insults hurled furiously, and they are shoved, stomped, sucked down to drown among this foam that is insurrection.

The boiling of the people- such a fascinating thing to watch.

They climb over one another, hit, flail, tear and scream and smash down into the mud neighbors, brothers, lovers.

They walk over one to get to another, to snatch away this man's watch and that woman's purse.

And on up the road- do they not hear their sons crying, their husbands dying; do they not sense with this 'compassion', this most prized aspect of man, that which separates him from beast, the final sighs of their brothers-

Do they not feel within their hearts the crumbling of their wooden signs and the shattering of their windows, the tearing down, the ripping up; do they look upon these shops and these avenues and these homes as only prospects, here a bit of bread, there a jar of jam?

And once he wanted this back.

Human Klaus, that pathetic little maggot, cried as he drained his first warm human neck.

Please, father, take it _back_, he begs you, mother, make it _stop_- what he wouldn't give to do away with this thirst, to deny this infernal _hunger_- to be a man and not a beast, it isn't much at all to desire, is it, mother, _mother please_-

And so on, sniveled the boy, the weakling, the _coward_.

Niklaus the feeble.

Niklaus the pathetic.

With tail tucked between his legs he sought to blend himself in, to walk among these creatures as if one of their own, but he'll let you in on a little joke, mate-

Klaus the monster is more human than you have ever been, boy.

Watch these beasts called man at work.

Do you smell, boy, their ripe underarm fear and their feral saliva rage? The foaming of the mouth, the gnashing of the teeth- the women with arms full and the men with fists bloodied-

This is how mankind conducts himself.

You may tear into the soft throat of man and drink until he is no more- you may reach with superhuman hand into the unfit dough of his belly and tear until he is so much less, but this, mate-

This is man with costume cast off, mask swinging round the neck.

He makes war upon himself, he starves the children and sells the women. He murders friend, neighbor, mother- and for _what_; because he has been disobeyed; because he is displeased; because he grew tired, desired another, let himself fester until he burst-

Mankind is not the remedy, mate.

He is the illness.

"The cavalry is on its way," he says softly to the boy with brown curls and bright smile.

"Are you clairvoyant then, Nicholas?"

He smiles.

He retrieves his rifle.

* * *

Behind the barricade, the boy with brown curls and bright smile fires with impunity.

He is immune.

The officers with reins in teeth, pistols in hand, helmets gonging, uniforms shredding- they are a wall, the Irish a hammer, and once, twice, again they strike, pound away with carts to shield them and rifles to defend them.

How invulnerable the young always are.

This boy is sheltered, war does not touch him, the horses wet snorts and the men's damp screams do not graze him; he smells their steaming shit and their rank copper blood but he is not splashed by them; he sees them fall from saddle to street, but never can they bring down _him _with his twenty infant years; God would not dare, not so able a youth, a man with strong back, straight legs, pretty cheeks-

And then he is hit.

He pops his head up at the wrong moment and the British bullets with their lucky aim find his throat, his skull, his heart.

His strong back stiffens and his straight legs wilt, and so quickly are they sapped of their roses, those pretty cheeks.

"Fill this goddamn hole!" Connolly screams, and beside him is suddenly another of these invulnerable young men with his eager hands and his unsteady aim.

A nick to his shoulder, a scrape to his hand.

He stumbles back, rotates his shoulder, shakes out his hand.

The boy with eager hands and unsteady aim lifts his rifle.

The horses- don't aim for the bloody _horses_-

"Take down the four-legged ones, bit easier to put it to the-"

He snaps the neck of this invulnerable young man beside him.

The horses are off limits, mate.

He fires.

He takes a shot to the knee and another to the elbow and though he may withstand these blows, still they knock him back, spin him around behind the barricade, and waiting for him is a hand to steady his arm, to stabilize his leg, and he breathes in her citrus perfume and her gunpowder hair and he smiles.

"Rebekah, sweetheart, what are you doing here?"

"De Valera's an ass. He wouldn't let me into Boland's."

"He isn't allowing women. Why didn't you just rip his face off, sister dear?"

"I thought about it. Too many witnesses. Wouldn't want our loving father showing up to spoil the fun, now would we?"

He ducks back down to wait for his wounds to seal themselves shut, re-loading his rifle. Rebekah kneels in front of him, hair tucked up beneath her hat, cheeks smudged, trousers torn, and he lifts an eyebrow. "Now where did you appropriate that?"

She pats a few strands of blonde back up underneath her hat. "From lunch. He didn't need it anymore, and I knew none of your things would fit me."

"Where is Elijah?"

"Home. Busy being above it all."

"And what are you doing here?"

"I'm bored. I want to see what it is you find so fascinating about your silly little war games." She taps her finger against the muzzle of his rifle. "Where do I get one of these?"

He pries the weapon from the hands of the youth who lies beside him with awkward neck and open eyes and offers it with a smile.

"I don't see what it is you get so giddy over every time one of these things springs up. It's noisy, and the men smell," she points out, firing a round through the neck of an officer whose mount rears and flails and pitches over backward.

"Would you be bloody _careful_?" he snaps. "If you don't like it, go home."

"Don't get touchy with me, Nik. Look- she's back on her feet already."

Together they hold the front of the barricade, Rebekah with cap askew, hair undone, the men cheering on this implausible duo with their cold steel courage, and when at last the officers pull back their horses and turns with pistols raised to flee away into the city, the mist has turned to monsoon, the screams to sighs.

He retreats with Rebekah in tow back into the GPO with its gaping windows and settles in a corner, doubling his jacket up beneath his neck, and for a moment she stands staring down at him, arms crossed.

"You are joking."

He spreads his hands, returns them to where he has folded them on his stomach.

"I will _not _sleep on the bloody floor, Nik."

"Well, if her highness protests the state of the accommodations, perhaps she should ask her litter bearers to kindly take her home?"

"It's raining."

"Yes, what a pity- and all the hours you put into that hair of yours." He shuts his eyes and smiles.

"You're an ass."

He keeps his eyes shut and with a little huff she sits down on the floor beside him, shaking out her hair.

"Nik?" she says quietly after awhile, and sets her head on his shoulder.

"Yes, Rebekah?"

"I missed you."

Something monstrous comes, and it seizes him by the throat, and for so long he tries to breathe around this titanic hand with its fingers round his neck and its palm plunged into his chest.

A hundred years, she left him.

Wondering, wishing, _worrying_, Rebekah.

He opens his eyes.

She has shut hers.

Sweet, stupid Rebekah, with her heart which opens too easily.

He smoothes a wayward strand from her eyes with his thumb, so softly, and when she smiles this hand turns, and it breaks something loose inside of him.

He blinks twice, looks up at the ceiling.

Dear sister, he wishes he could say.

Forever at her side will he remain, only forgive him his faults, pardon his temper which is so quick to ignite; accept him always, sister, no matter his crimes, regardless of his sins; to be one, a single unit, _family_- this is all he _wants_, beloved Bekah.

Always and forever, sister, do not think he has forgotten this promise, do not think he has relinquished this bond; though it may stretch, yield, become tattered, he will not be the one to sever it; he will never slice this tether which holds him fast.

Through the windows the rain is pushed, on wind of gunpowder and death, and though she breathes out of habit and her skin pimples out of reflex he takes the jacket from beneath his head, and he spreads it carefully over her.

The _smile _he receives-

Come along, Bekah, human Niklaus called over his shoulder, and with frightened cry she plunged into the woods after him, shouting as she snapped twigs, powdered flowers, stomped flat the marshmallow moss underfoot.

Into a ravine she fell, crying all the while, and an hour he spent carefully fishing her free with his soft child limbs, and though she nearly broke him he carried her home on his back, and for his lateness and Rebekah's injuries he received eight lashes, one for each useless year.

"Stop _hurting him_!" she screamed, and flew at their father with tiny fists pummeling and infant feet flailing. "Don't _touch him_, father!"

But it's all _right_, Bekah, he told her before their father could turn his anger on her. Go on to your room; he'll be along to play in a while.

Rebekah, sweetheart.

No marquis will cradle her as pitiful Niklaus did, cautiously stepping, fervently praying. No count, no captain, no baron, no _king_, sister, will love as he does, blind to nothing, accepting of all, and though his familial fervency may not equal the exhilarating passion of a lover, what _need _have you of anything beyond loyalty such as this, Rebekah?

They sleep with heads together, hands touching.

* * *

The sun has not yet broken.

The darkness is complete, the rain swept away, the men sleeping.

She wakens with a start beside him.

"What is that, Nik?" she whispers.

They lie listening in the dark to the squeaking of the wheels, the chiming of the boots.

"They are bringing in the machine guns."

* * *

War surges onward, inexorable.

Behind the barricade he listens to it creep from street to street, here a rattling of automatics, there a reply of revolvers, now the advance of the troops, then the defiance of the rebels, on and on and on this popular pursuit of man pushes, swamping bridges, blocking streets, flooding shops.

She is not so cavalier today, Rebekah with her tense white hands and her pressed white lips.

St. Stephen's takes the brunt of the morning, and with his over-sensitive nose he smells the crushed vegetation of their trenches, the stench of this man's bowels, that woman's blood, the white smoke in its dense April fog.

Down Sackville this fog shifts, skulks, slinks.

The men consume their lunches like wolves, bread in one hand, rifle in the other, and while up the road their fathers, husbands, sons fall to the hailstorm that is battle, pelted, pierced, punctured, the women with children in tow smash out the last remaining windows and stand fighting in the streets, a wretched tug-of-war, a vile comedy of raised hands, pointed fingers, distended mouths.

"And this is what Elijah saves his compassion for," Rebekah notes with curled lip.

"What does he see in them?" he adds with a click of his tongue.

The watch he lifted from a shop over on Abbey tells him it is just past 4:00 when a little dirt-smudged gang descends upon the toy shop across the street to return with arms full, pockets brimming, and in the center of O'Connell now they stack their treasures as the fighting rolls on, and with flickering matches they light their plunder.

"What are those little brats doing-"

The sky sparks.

The pinwheels and the fountains and the little purple stars bring to Sackville an early sunset, a magnificent dusk, and while Rebekah scoffs he smiles and he curls his fingers and he tries with his memory honed by centuries to tuck this moment away.

The _colors_- what a painting they would make.

From the direction of the Liffey there is the swishing of a gunboat, the tired howling of her propellers.

"Well," he says with bright smile, tipped hat, seized rifle. "This should be interesting."

* * *

Wednesday, the shelling of the city begins.

It starts at Liberty Hall and through Dublin it sweeps, pulverizing the store fronts, the shop stoops, and with hands to her ears Rebekah demands he make it _stop_, and round about Northumberland the shots ring out and the men fall down, one wave retreats, another surges forward, the houses are chewed, the gardens are crushed, beneath panicked elephant stampedes Dublin is shaken, pounded, dusted-

The north end has had her run, the men exhausted, the trenches filled, the bridges clogged, it is their turn now, the artillery turns its eye to the carts, the empty 'cracker corpses-

The carts splinter.

The bullets set upon the boy beside Rebekah, and like wild animals they tear into him, jostling him this way, that way, picking him up, slamming him down-

He is struck a dozen times.

His knee buckles and his elbow jerks and Rebekah screams, once, again, crouches down to pull the rounds like wasp stingers from arms, chest, legs, and to their right the GPO rumbles, creaks- all around them is this wooden symphony of folding foundation, crumpling wall-

The machine guns open fire with a roar.

The layer between rebel and officer disintegrates, flings itself in a great timber snowfall through the air, knifing lungs, limbs, heart, and with rifle still in hand he blurs to cover her, takes a back full of this wooden shrapnel as the men scramble shouting backward to nearby shop and alley and street corner.

"Nik!"

"Go on and get to the Imperial, Rebekah. I'll be right behind you, sweetheart."

She flees empty-handed and he turns, healed already, and over the splinters he steps, around the fragments he goes, his dead heart pumping, cheeks alight, fingers trembling.

Flushed with life he sprints, stabs, feeds, throat to his mouth, heart in his hand, and then beyond the shoulder of the officer from which he drinks, he spots a man.

Leather cheeks, granite hands.

No smile lines round his eyes, no grooves of laughter carved about his mouth.

He drops his rifle and staggers back and the officer sways, folds, collapses facedown in the dirt and blood and brick.

His legs have gone to water and on these liquid limbs he can no longer stand; he sits down hard in the street, scrabbles away with cut hands, worn bootheels, flips himself over onto his knees and crawls forward like this for a few feet, like a bloody _dog _he is before this man-

Clumsily he pushes himself back onto his feet, and even more clumsily he weaves his way toward the shattered barricade, and behind him the guns snarl on, splintering his frail wishbone spine, but on he runs, faster he flies-

"_Rebekah_!"

"Nik!"

Sackville Street burns.

The flames consume barricade, garrison, the wooden dolls with their arms cocked high to wave through gaping windows; the candy wrappers shrink, the flour sacks crackle, the tinned vegetables in their saltwater seas pop.

"_Nik_!"

"Going somewhere, boy?"

He feels the connection of the rifle butt with his knees and the hard ground underneath him and though he should not be winded he lies breathless, bayonet to his throat, and how _familiar _this is, how quickly his muscles still loosen and his throat still closes, and now he lifts one arm feebly above his head to stave off Mikael's blow as his father swings his gun like a bat, displacing his jaw-

Wheezing, he flips onto his stomach, drags himself forward an inch, two, _please_, father, he is not _ready_, let him _go_-

"Come back, you little _coward_," Mikael snaps, and stomps his hand until he curls it shaking against his chest, the fingers bent incorrectly, the knuckles in pale gravestone mounds through his skin.

Mikael breaks his left arm, shatters his right knee cap, and then like a train Rebekah slams into him and Mikael flips, smacks his head on the pavement, and under fire of these repeating rifles which frighten her so much she helps him to his feet and holds him as he heals.

From behind them the rebels return fire, peeking around alley wall, hotel entryway, shop window, and in the middle of this they are caught, battered about, and now he hears the crunching of Mikael's skull repairing, his jaw re-setting, and with his superior speed he hurries her along to the Imperial, arm around her shoulders, but Mikael is not yet done, and the shot takes him in the spine, the next in the knee-

The insurgents reach out to pull him to safety, to drag him beneath the awning, and he roars as his body rejects with a shudder the little projectiles which have embedded themselves beneath his skin, fighting their intrusion, the flesh closing halfway, the bone knitting partially shut.

"It's white oak," he rasps, clinging to her hand as she crushes his fingers in hers.

"Get _up_, Nik, he's _coming_!" she shrieks.

There are cries from the men who pour everything they have into this officer of the law who approaches with bright buttons, shining boots, silvered hair, staggering but never falling, broken but never beaten, and with another cry Rebekah lifts him back onto his feet as he gropes for the fatal slivers, the guns roaring all around him, the men shouting, Sackville burning on, everything cinder and dust and pale gun fog-

He kicks open the door of the hotel, pulling her behind him.

He wrenches the slivers free with a gasp and crushes them to powder beneath his boot.

"Nik-"

"It'll be all right, sweetheart," he says with dry mouth, lead tongue, trembling hands.

Through the flames they rush, the walls flaking, the furniture smoldering, the lights in their glass cages exploding with sharp gunshot pops, the staircase ash, the carpet in a fine black charcoal beneath their feet-

And always just a step or so behind Mikael with his heavy tread, his lowered head.

Do not think you can escape, boy.

There is nowhere you can run.

I will _always _find you, boy, you little pathetic weakling- why don't you come out and fight like a _man_, Niklaus-

One-handed he snaps off an untouched banister and cracks it against the wall as he goes, and pushing Rebekah on ahead of him, he turns, and he lets his father's momentum carry him into this improvised stake, this thing of blackened oak which gives way with a loud bone splintering.

Mikael gurgles.

He backhands his father across the room, over the charcoal carpet, into the staircase of ash, and then with Rebekah's hands in fists in his coat he kicks down the back door and flees into the smoking alleyway beyond, the streets alive around him, the men dead underneath him, Dublin in pieces, Ireland in retreat.

* * *

"The fighting lasted until Friday, when the rebels surrendered. We of course had to check out a bit early, thanks to my father. Rebekah and I moved to Germany, where I took up the Great War once more for a bit, Elijah went on to Russia. Had a stint with the Romanovs. Bit short-lived, that."

She stares at him for a long moment in silence.

"You miss her, don't you?"

His fingers cease their tapping against his bicep.

"Your whole face changes when you talk abut them, you know. Your family."

He curls his nails into his arm.

* * *

"The 20s," he says, spinning her into an energetic jive.

"The 30s," he continues, showing her something he calls 'The Carolina Shag', which so does not give her any ideas, thank you very much, and on down the years they progress in this way, tripping, laughing, until he stops at the 1960s, arms around her waist, feet in a slow box step.

He is so friggin' _intent_, when he stares.

She doesn't want him to see all the way down inside of her. She does not want him to look at her with his thousand years and his million murders and make her _feel_- it is not _ok_, this pulsing in her stomach and this thundering in her chest, doesn't he _get _that-

But the way he rests his forehead against hers.

He hovers but he does not touch; like a gentleman he waits, aware that she is not yet ready, and _God_, why can't he be less man, more monster when he is with her; why can't he give her a freaking _reason_- she wants to turn away, to let go, to _hate _and he will not _give her that_ what is _wrong _with her, him, this whole freaking _world _with slanted view, tilted axis-

For ten lifetimes his father hated him and his mother rejected him, and he still remembers how to smile, how to ghost his hands gently along shoulders, cheeks, chin, how to touch without breaking, to hold without fracturing.

He left himself open just enough, and he handed over such a fragile part of himself, and now he waits to see what she will do with it, whether she will crush cruelly or welcome willingly, and all this _power _in her own little pink-painted hands-

Tell her how this happened. Explain why it is _her_, how he looked over a thousand years of women, queens, empresses, executives, and he said, oh there's the one I want, that one with the friend, you know the one, I'll take her, little Caroline Forbes who knows nothing, who has been nowhere.

Little Caroline Forbes, whose mother loves her in spite of, whose friends adore her anyway.

There is always a but.

Caroline is great, but.

I love my little girl, but.

She wants the damn balloons to trickle and not hang.

She killed a man. She killed a man and she enjoyed it and she will _always _enjoy it, because you see this little girl who wore her tiaras crooked and sucked her thumb until she was five- she died on an in-between year and she was not supposed to come back.

And yet she did.

She came back bossier, bitchier, more jealous. Exaggeratedly neurotic. Crackishly controlling.

But he watched her charge around that pageant snapping her fingers and barking her orders and he smiled. She stalked into his house and unloaded on him about Elena the dress thief _skank _and he laughed.

For him there is no however.

There is just her, control freak Caroline with the color-coordinated closet and the alphabetical bookshelf, and all of this is okay with him.

He loves her not in spite of but because.

* * *

Sunday, he watches three of Sophie's associates slip up behind Marcel's man and strike with extended teeth, elongated claws, and with barely a cry he is dragged away, off the streets, into the alleys.

Caroline stares silently beside him.

He takes her to the Antieau Gallery on Royal and enjoys her face as she browses.

On their way home arm in arm they are ambushed, and without unlinking he decapitates the woman, she head butts the man, and with tail tucked between his legs this one survivor flees, still bleeding.

* * *

In the afternoons they sit silently side by side on his sofa, and on one such occasion as this, she takes her bare little foot, and she props it on his thigh as she reads, so _casually_-

His pencil stops.

She does not even seem to notice this nonchalant intimacy, so absorbed is she in his faded first edition of _War and Peace_.

He hesitates for a moment, stretches out his free hand, draws it back, drapes it carefully one finger at a time over her shin.

She turns a page and smiles absentmindedly.

He blends a corner and smiles with everything he is, cheeks, lips, eyes, all of him involved in this one simple expression.

* * *

Tuesday, there is another burning.

With a whoosh they ignite her dry straw curls, and from three blocks away he smells her blistering skin, her soot clothes, the fine peach fuzz of the arms and the heavy black thread of the eyebrows.

* * *

"What do you think the world's going to be like, a hundred years from now?" she asks him one evening in his studio.

"I don't care."

"So, you're not curious about the flying cars, or Facebook version 300 or the 1200th season of America's Next Top Model?"

It is not about the when, Caroline, or the how, or the why.

It is only the who.

He smiles and goes back to his painting.

* * *

Marcel orders forward his troops.

Sophie pushes back with hers.

In the streets of New Orleans they deadlock, a wolf gutted, a vampire pierced, and like the careful general he presides over this all, watching, waiting.

* * *

"What were you like as a human?"

She asks him little questions such as these from time to time. To dig down deep, he knows. To glimpse again the things which he has shown only to her, to reassure, remind.

There is still something here.

If Klaus has endured so too has Nik, and though he may lie buried he still juts free from time to time an arm to clear the mud from his eyes, the sodden grave mold from his lips.

But this question, love.

His jaw tightens. His charcoal creaks. "Pathetic."

"Well, I don't believe that. I bet I would have liked him."

He looks up with a little smile. "Well, you also like that little Canadian girl -what was her name again?- so there's no accounting for taste, now is there, sweetheart?"

"_His _name is Justin Bieber, and I told you that in _confidence_."

"And I have kept it in confidence, Caroline. You don't see me popping round the city with your iPod in hand, showing it to-"

"Ok, it's not _good_," she interrupts, crossing her arms. "But it's a little catchy, you have to admit?"

He lifts an eyebrow and she looks away with an involuntary smile and that little laugh which pierces him so accurately, right through the heart. "Shut up, ok?"

* * *

He points out Marcel's spies as they walk.

Listen not to the incorrect hearts or the unnatural lungs. Marcel's associates are varied; a vampire is not proof of an enemy, a man not evidence of an ally.

In Ireland an adversary more often than not wore his resistance openly, a badge, a pair of boots, a nightstick tapped menacingly against the palm, but when British Intelligence began to understand that Collins had reached with his long fingers into the heart of their system, they too put up their hoods, tucked away their badges, exchanged uniform for coat and cap.

You must see beyond.

Watch how they stand, pay attention to their movement; do their hands flutter, their eyes dart; do they walk too casually for a gaze which sweeps and segregates and hones in?

She is soon catching them herself, one on the street corner, another in a door way, and how proud of herself she seems, how brilliantly her face lights and her eyes spark.

"Would you like to know how to evade them?" he asks.

"Lead the way, Mr. Bond," she answers with a smile, hands in her jacket pockets, and with one eyebrow lifted he takes her by the arm, and he pulls her into the Metropolitan.

Collins bluffed his way through the city with his audacity; with neat suits, charming smile he strolled unconcealed through the streets, he walked like a tourist and not a terrorist, and on they waved him, from checkpoint, road block, pat-down they excused him, but a face such as his- no pressed collar will obscure him, no tipped hat will hide him.

They push their way forward into the dancers, and from her white cheeks and thin lips drains the horror of the violence to which she has been too quickly exposed, and with a smile she grabs his hand, and through smoke, strobe, sweat she leads him, beyond the room of Techno and its companion of Rock, from entryway to back alley they slip, relentlessly pursued, obstinately hunted.

The hounds surge, the rabbits run on.

He flashes from alley way to dumpster to second-story balcony, her hand still in his, and with finger to her lips, smile on his own, he peeks over the railing and into the streets, and once more they are off, leaping, blending in, sprinting off, through honeycomb of club, curb, cabaret they wind, and when at last he presses her to the wall behind the St. Marie, she is laughing.

"Quiet," he reprimands her, but his lips twitch and his tone holds no menace, and she takes her hands from her mouth and smiles at him.

"Did we lose them?"

"Why don't you go on and check?" he replies, slipping his hands from where he has leaned them against the wall to either side of her head.

She peeks her head carefully around the corner.

"The guy with the weird beard, 10:00."

"And the woman with the funny hair, 12:00," he adds, smiling down at her.

She playfully wiggles her eyebrows. "I lead this time?"

He gestures her onward with an elaborate sweep of his arm.

* * *

Friday, his world is upended.

* * *

He has her arm through his own as they stroll -how freaking old-world is that- he never even _tries _to hold her hand- and with rapt eyes, open mouth, she listens to him reconstruct 19th century Paris, 17th century Japan; on down the years he takes her, through samurai rule, Napoleonic wars he guides her, and then he quizzes her all about her childhood and shares with her some of his own, and when she speaks he really_ listens_- this is what gets her most of all-

He knew Hitler and he mingled with the Tudors and yet he hangs onto each description of dance classes and every account of Sunday school; her mother's absence, her father's abandonment -her silly little princess dreams and her first discovery of _Les Miserables_, aged thirteen- he wants to know about them all.

He doesn't discount a word.

And somewhere between Bourbon and Toulouse there is a little white hot thrill of knowledge, a lightning realization, and it takes her feet and it plants them in the street, and when he turns with cocked head, raised eyebrows, she can only stand staring at him, hands at her sides.

She is smitten with his dimples, struck a little dumb by his accent.

And that is _ok_, he is beautiful, murderer or no a girl is allowed to look, to appreciate, to give her aesthetic approval if she cannot offer up her moral, but her crushed chest, butterfly stomach- they are not attached to either, her chest caves in when he asks how anyone could leave her and her stomach takes flight when he says he would never, and all the things he's done- it's not that they don't matter- of _course _they matter, but there is _more_, just _look _at him-

Mom, she said she wouldn't give in.

Stefan, she promised there was nothing.

Tyler…you were her always.

For her entire eternal existence, she was going to love you.

And then along came this man.

And he doesn't hand her _Cosmo _because sure as hell Vampire Barbie wouldn't be interested in something like, say, Proust's _Remembrance of Things Past_, and he teaches her without even wondering if she can learn, he never wonders if she is up to a challenge, he always believes she will come through, and to be _elevated _like this, when everyone else has only ever tried to put her down-

"Caroline?"

"I just want to look at something real quick," she says thickly.

She ducks into a jewelry shop.

It is not that she doesn't sense them.

With their feral canine reek they stuff up her nose and close over her throat, and with a scoff she puts the first onto his back, the second through the front case, and now the poor woman behind the counter screams, ducks down with arms over her head, and Caroline spins, darts out her hand to lift her third attacker by the throat, and through her neck the fourth tears with his little wasp needle.

* * *

For a moment, the world is muffled.

The streets recede, the people fade away.

He hears the murmuring of the tourists, their little insect voices buzzing, buzzing, but these sounds belong only to those nearest him, those crowded elbow to elbow, pressed side to side, beyond them he senses nothing, and with his undead heart so cold in his chest he flashes from street corner to shop entrance-

The employee saw nothing, it happened too fast, oh God, look at the _mess_, that poor girl, what the hell _happened_-

There is a boy facedown in the shattered glass.

Underneath his skin crawls a beast but tonight with the moon quartered he is only a man, and he is taken away so easily.

* * *

From the Middle Ages, humanity received the Judas Cradle, the Pear of Anguish, and of course the rack, that most prominent instrument of man's brutality.

Believe what rumors you may but he has none of these, only his paintings, his poems, this pretty little 16th century looking glass with its antique frame.

So, shh, mate, still your shaking hands, your rolling animal eyes, stop fighting your bonds, swallow down your pleas.

He breaks the mirror.

Let's have a bit of chit-chat now, shall we, he offers with a smile as he inserts the splinters beneath the man's nails.

There is nothing he would not do for this woman, mate, you understand. The creator of man -God, the big bang, wherever your beliefs may lie- in all of his infinite wisdom invented man's strength and women's cunning, a parry to stave off this superior force of arm, and with fluttering lashes, doe eyes, she wields this weapon with marksman accuracy.

You have perhaps encountered this a time or two yourself.

You understand about the spell, this net cast out empty and reeled in full.

For a very long time, he slipped its repercussions.

He dodged its coils.

But what to do, mate, woman will have her way, no man will escape her enchantment; the greatest kings, the lowest peasants.

All of them will they fall eventually.

So you must understand, then, why he flays the skin from your ribs, why your knee rests cap-down against the chair upon which you writhe, why he takes this knife which flayed your ribs and he presses its tip into your panicked bovine eye, rolling, rolling, always moving, hold _steady_, mate, wouldn't want him to slip, now would you-

He presses just enough with this tip to slice the first layer, but the eye is a remarkable thing, resilient, and though it may be scratched, scraped, scored deep, rarely can it not mend its wounds.

But a little deeper, past sclera, through iris, into retina- well, that's a different story now, isn't it.

He thrusts his knife in and listens to the chalkboard screeching of its point in the socket, and over the man's sobs he hisses his reassurances.

Shh.

There, there.

It'll all be over soon, mate.

Tell him everything, he says with hands folded on his knee, head cocked.

He doesn't _know_, Sophie's stubborn little minion insists.

The other eye is it, then, he asks, and complies.

The thumb nail, pointer, middle, on down the line this will go, mate, hands, feet, twenty different times can he do this, but you may end it now, only give him a location, at least tell him she is alive, _please_-

Talk, you _little bitch or he will rip out your insides-_

There was a technique, in the middle ages.

The saw they called, it, quite simply, a straightforward title for an uncomplicated procedure.

For those who had nothing else at hand but wanted still to punish, to penalize the adulterers, the blasphemers, the homsexuals, those outcasts of society, there was the saw, this fantastic toothed tool of the common man, and when someone stepped outside the bounds of societal constraints, they were tied head down to allow the blood to flow instead to the brain, to prolong consciousness, to stave off death, and they were cut from groin to abdomen and left screaming to consider their crimes.

Now, he has no saw.

He is of course no farmhand, mate, no common laborer of the peasantry.

But what say you he take these thousand year old hands with so much strength inside them, and go about this wonderfully simple technique with merely his fingers; a bit messy, of course, a tear is not so clean as a cut, but still he thinks it should suffice, don't you agree?

And in the end, with empty sockets, smashed lips, stump legs, dwarf arms, the boy tells him everything.

* * *

Cold.

Winter air arctic stones-

Stones?

Stones.

Underneath-

Hands her _hands_-

Breathe…no she doesn't

She doesn't need to breathe does she-

Do it anyway.

One, two, Forbes.

She needs to

Open her eyes

She has to _see_

Where is she where is she where is she God please someone _answer_-

Her hands they're _burning_-

_Listen_.

Human lungs, nervous heart.

Hot blood, warm throat.

"I'm sorry, Caroline."

Sorry- sorry _why_-

"But you're always going to be a pawn, as long as you mean something to him."

Pawn.

Chesspiece Forbes.

She's going to…they're going to move her around the board again…aren't they?

But did you know she's a person-

_She's a person_-

Wet floor, dripping ceiling.

Plink, plink.

Plink plink plink plink plink plink

You want to know what she thinks-

About the chess board?

Fuck it.

So _tired_.

Of your shitty _games_.

Caroline the Used.

Do you want to know…is anyone curious how she feels-

No.

You just take your bullets and you thrust them into her bones.

Your vervain-soaked rags, your sharpened pencils.

And daddy-

_Daddy how could you_-

She can see now.

Just a slit-

But still.

Wait for it, _bitch_.

She can do this.

One eye, the other.

Her wrists test, her arms strain.

Wet floor, dripping ceiling.

Plink plink plink plink plink plink plink plink plink

Vanilla perfume and lavender shampoo and cheap costume metal.

One of you.

Five of them.

Should have brought more.

* * *

He kills casually on his way into the crypts.

Time for lasting impressions later.

Sophie's two lookouts lie in steaming piles before they are even aware he is upon them, and then through the door he strides, jacket flapping, arms swinging, and brave little thing she is, stepping out to confront him like this.

"You have just outlived your usefulness," he tells her.

"Actually, I haven't," she snaps. "Allying with you divided some of my people, in particular a few of the packs who united with us against Marcel. They don't want to work with vampires, and they're not happy that I decided to. Some of them tried to kill me a few days ago."

"I don't care. _Where is she_?"

"You're about to care."

He crosses the floor in a blink to stand toe to toe with her. "You have three seconds before I rip out your throat. One."

"Go ahead and do it. You kill me, you kill Caroline." She crosses her arms. "We're linked. I guess you have a vested interest in keeping me alive, now, don't you? I'm not an idiot. If it wasn't the werewolves, you'd have killed me just as soon as I wasn't convenient to you anymore."

"You're lying."

"Fine. I'm lying. I hope whatever time the two of you had together, it was enough."

Out of the shadows step her lackeys, five wolves, one witch, _really_, sweetheart, when you would need an army to stand between the two of them-

Ah, here are the others now, these cringing young enchanters with eyes cast down, hands fisted tight.

Go on and have a look, loves, at this bedtime story whispered faltering into your ear; feast your eyes on the great Niklaus, nightmare of nightmares, the bogeyman's bogeyman.

May it be the last thing you ever see.

* * *

He is here.

Of course he is here.

Klaus, her knight in shining armor.

Thank you.

Got how ironic is this but _thank you_.

But she is done needing a savior.

Her skin hisses and her ropes snap.

She shakes out the kinks, stretches out the cramps.

Cracks her neck, her fingers, her back.

Let her show you how fucking _over this _she is.

* * *

She is so quick she nearly takes him by surprise.

Sophie he leaves.

The others he shatters, takes apart, strews about in little autumn piles, wet red leftovers the size of his fist, and though she strikes out he easily shrugs off the weak pressure in his skull, breaks one of her friends in half at the spine, tosses her with a loud firewood crack down onto the stones.

And Caroline-

She roars, she blurs, she sinks her fangs into Sophie's vulnerable white throat and tosses her like a doll, into the wall she goes, screaming as she flies, her little rabbit heart thumping, thumping-

"Caroline, _stop_-"

"I am _done_. I am not your _pawn_. I am freaking _tired _of playing the victim. So here's the freaking deal, _Sophie_," she snaps, and she touches her fingers to her throat and she pulls them away red.

"I told you I wasn't lying," Sophie gasps, holding her shoulder as she climbs swaying to her feet.

"What the hell is going _on_-"

"It seems our friend here got herself on the wrong side of a few former associates, and now she wants my protection. She's linked the two of you."

"Go ahead, Klaus. The spell drained all of us. I'm not strong enough to stop you, just like they weren't," she says bitterly.

"What do you mean we're _linked_? If she dies then I-"

"Yes," he says roughly.

"I am done bowing to your kind," Sophie tells him coldly. "I didn't want to hurt you, Caroline. I don't have anything against you. But _you_- I am done being underestimated by you."

Such hate, sweetheart.

Such menace in your eyes.

Do you think he has not seen it before, that no one has grown tired of his power, his influence, his boot heel upon their neck, his hand round their throat? Do you think that he is _impressed _with your little show, that he will allow this woman of all people to be _used_-

He makes his own terms.

He does not bargain, he does not _barter_.

"Well," he says with eerie smile, empty eyes. "Let's give you a bit more of a fighting chance then, why don't we?"

He rips open his wrist and as she cries out he pushes her head down, and he holds her in place until she chokes and gurgles and drinks.

You see, sweetheart, in all things there is a loophole, and death is no different.

Neither the reaper nor his scythe are infallible.

What is taken away may be given back.

"I'm sorry, Caroline," he says, and with a sharp crack he snaps Sophie's neck.

Her own neck twists and with blank eyes she falls, curls fluttering, cheeks gray, and he understands suddenly that he has miscalculated.

* * *

There are some things which go too deep.

He kneels with arthritic knees, numb hands.

He feels with these numb hands her sunken cheeks, wiry hair, that permanent silver of the monster's true death, and he curls his fingers into her shirt and he sobs until he is blind.

Once for the deed, twice for the tears, Mikael used to tell him with lash upon his back, and so early on he learned to make no sound when his father's words cut him and his mother's silence reopened him, but there is some pain which cannot be stifled.

He presses his face into her hair and with his monster's lungs which need no air he wheezes, he struggles- move the oxygen from mouth to windpipe to lungs, concentrate on this faulty bellows action, do not feel her burnt paper skin or her charred desert lips-

Caroline Caroline _Caroline_-

Once, there was a man who couldn't love.

His father hated him, you see.

And his mother with her soft herb-scented fingers faked this emotion well enough, stroked his hair when he was sick and held his hand when he was scared, but in the end she discarded him as well.

Niklaus the crossbreed.

Niklaus the abomination.

Do not touch, boy, she does not want your embrace, she does not care for your love.

Run along.

Seek our your family elsewhere, boy, this one is through with you, they have had enough, outsider, interloper, stranger.

And then there came a girl.

And, _oh_, how she lit up, how she wore him down.

What his mother offered through lying teeth she gave up with smiling lips: you are not just monster but man; underneath Klaus lies still the remnants of Nik, and they are worthy.

She does not find them wanting.

And so he fell, though he did not mean to.

He let in, though he did not want to.

Caroline-

Where does he go.

What does he _do_, with his thirty extra lifetimes.

Tell him _how_.

He has only just learned how to hold on he is not ready to _let go please_-

Give him a smile, love.

Feel his hand, sweetheart, his fingers between your own-

Hold him _back_.

* * *

When she comes to, he has a human waiting.

"Apparently I misjudged your little spell," he says with dead eyes, blank voice.

She shrinks back away against the wall.

Underneath his tears there is nothing.

"You see, I thought feeding you my blood would nullify the particularly nasty side effect your death would have on her. It wasn't permanent, so hers wouldn't be either," he says, and he lets out the ugliest laugh she has ever heard.

"Do you know I'm hardly ever wrong?"

* * *

She cowers.

She cringes.

She fights the hand he clamps around her jaw but with his ten extra centuries he shoves her face into the sweet young throat of this scantily-clad club-hopper he picked up a mile down the road, and he lets nature takes its course.

They always feed.

They always think, of course, that for them it will be different, for them it will be not murder but suicide, their heart is pure, their morals are unwavering, and say what you will about man, he is delusional to the very end.

With steadfast faith he goes to his demise.

And then the scent.

The hot syrup in its pulsing veins, that alcoholic's elixir, irresistible, overpowering.

The brief struggle, the hasty second-guessing-

And the release.

The monster emerges because he is never far from the surface.

You have only to check your history to be sure of that.

She pulls her face away stained, veins retreating, fangs retracting, and back she clambers, away she scrambles, what _fear _he sees in her eyes and smells in her pores.

On this he will be sustained.

On this he will subsist.

Don't kill me, her eyes beg, that universal instinct of human and monster alike when they hold within their senses the circling of the sharks, the creeping of the lions.

Oh sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart.

He isn't going to kill you.

That is the beauty of immortality, love.

He strips your bones, you re-grow your skin.

He pulls off your fingers, you regenerate the stumps.

And round and round we go.

Have no fear, love.

You he will never kill.

* * *

"Klaus," she croaks.

Her cheekbone shatters, her rib snaps.

"_Klaus_-"

She feels his hand in her chest, ghosting the heart but never quite touching, his fingers denting, pulling back, shallowly puncturing, and she arches, scrabbles around with her nails for something to hold onto, an anchor, a thing to keep her grounded-

Stop stop stop stop _stop please it hurts what are you doing you _stood on that porch and you promised her that never again would this happen- 'you know I'd never hurt you' where did that go_ please_-

* * *

Sophie screams.

But it is hers he hears.

* * *

She sags back onto the ground with a gasp, hand to her chest.

He turns slowly.

There is this sound, caught in his throat.

Sob or whisper she is not sure, but it sticks fast, he can't shake it loose, he struggles with its shape, chokes on its mass.

And then Mr. Billion-year-old Original Hybrid sinks to his knees, and he puts a hand down to steady himself, and all he can do is stare.

Sophie vanishes.

He does not blink.

"Caroline."

Her name has never meant so many things.

You think it's just a few syllables, some letters cobbled together to make something pleasing, and then for this one moment you really hear it, you finally understand, and it is actually nothing less than everything.

* * *

She waits outside, and in only a minute he is back.

"She's got a few bodyguards coming her way," he says quietly, striding across the grass toward her. "I instructed one of them to report back to me as soon as they find her, the rest to never leave."

He opens his mouth again.

She holds up a hand. "_Don't_. Don't feed me your crap about 'casualties of war'."

He says nothing.

He dips his head like a kicked puppy, and then with tight jaw he takes another step forward, and he lifts his hands to her face and stands stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

She takes him by the wrists and peels his hands slowly away.

He lets them slap hollowly against his sides where she drops them.

"I meant what I said," she tells him. "I am _done_. I am not going to be a victim. I am not going to put up with this crap anymore. I am not something to be freaking _used_ anymore, do you understand me?"

He holds his face so still, but his eyes have always given away too much.

"So whatever you're planning to do, however you're going to slip into Marcel's network- you're going to let me help. I'm going to be part of this. I am not going to sit on the sidelines, waiting to be freaking _kidnapped_, or bartered like a freaking _poker chip_-"

She is just done -she is just _done _goddammit _ok_- maybe she is no longer human but she is still a _person_, she is not a piece to be pushed across the squares, she is not a bluff to be called, or a weakness to be exploited- she was once a girl with pigtails in her hair and a father in her kitchen, and she _deserves better_.

She should have more.

He is still so broken, he with his shattered eyes and pressed lips, and so it is ok that he doesn't say anything, that he only nods, looks down, blinks.

She has been broken a time or two herself.

She holds out her hand, and he looks at it like he has never seen something like this before, this reaching forward, this offering up.

"Now take me home," she says.

* * *

**A/N: So Sophie is now a vampire (she's really going to enjoy that, I'm sure), and, see, I did take something from the show- didn't the witches link Hayley and the baby to them or something? (I don't remember for sure. I've only seen the episode once.) I just did it with someone Klaus actually gives a crap about.**

**And I know, I know- another Caroline-is-captured scenario- I'm sorry. But as she made very clear, this is done. It's time for her character to take some important steps forward, and one of those steps is coming to terms with just how victimized she has been, and finally saying, no, you know what, fuck this, I am a queen and I will not be treated this way. We're going to see Caroline really start to grow and come into herself.**

**Also, I know Klaus said that the closest his father ever came over the centuries was the day he killed his favorite horse, but I couldn't resist plugging Mikael into the Ireland section. I want to see Daddy Mikaelson and the kids butt heads in some of the flashbacks. Also, Chicago looked like a pretty close call to me, so I think the actual canon contradicts itself a little in regards to that.**

**The next one-shot will contain more flashbacks to Ireland; I want to go into how Collins infiltrated British intelligence and use this to show how Klaus draws upon his vast experience to conduct his war against Marcel. It stands to reason, having been around for so long, through so much history, so many wars, that he would be quite the strategist. I hope you guys aren't bored by these flashbacks, because there will be plenty of them, spanning many different time periods and locations. I am a bit of a history nerd, and it's fun to incorporate my research into these fics. Think of it like 4th period History, if it were taught by Klaus. (Which certainly would have made school much more interesting for me.)**

**I promise we'll see a sibling or two show up soon. As much as I love Klaroline, this is, after all, an Originals series.**

**Oh, and I wanted to note really quickly that if Klaus sobbing like a little bitch over the concubines he murdered in Egypt seemed a bit OOC, my personal head canon puts this scene shortly after he was originally turned, when he had not yet lost touch with human Klaus. I like to think of Egypt as sort of the beginning of the twisted man we see today, and may go into it in more depth later on.**

**Thank you for reading, and until next time.**


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